The Child of the Void
by BlueStarlightWriter
Summary: She had been a babe who had seen divinity, had felt the frailty of lords, the might of men; had seen the truthness of history and met the benevolence of God himself. But now God is mortal, and she is without a purpose. Can she requaint her love for a man, who is now everything she hates? OC x Outsider
1. Void Flower

The Child of the Void

~~o~~

Chapter One: Void Flower

She had been a babe who had seen divinity, had felt the frailty of lords, the might of men; had seen the truthness of history and met the benevolence of God himself, all at the age of one year, still in her cradle, bare save for a silken shroud to lie under the celestrial chart of a new year sky.

She had seen beyond the lustre of her ritual tapers and the seremonious whispers of her sisters, while her mother had carved retched runes unto her skin - of rats and plague and blood. The girl had seen death and smiled, had seen birth and wept. Her sisters had chanted for hours, raising their arms and bowing their heads to the mother of the covern, who carved a part of the babe's spirit from her heart to feed the essence of the divine.

Her innocence had ended that night, when her hair had lost its silken blonde to a withered grey; when the blue of her eyes had faded to the current of the river, to be cold and void and white.

She was to see what others could not, to see the very stars themselves fade from the horizon once a century had passed, to eventually step into the very Void itself, for that was the intention of her covern.

And so the young babe had flowered to see the northern and southern isles of the world in a foreign light: to observe reality pouring into the shattered reflection of the Void. She had learned to witness the evil of the world and accept it, saw men drowning in the rivers of the city and felt their last breath as her own. She tasted the blood of the poor in her wine and found whale bone in the nets by the southern piers, that sung in forbidden magic.

Yet after two decades of lordship then poverty, when her father had fell to dust and bone and her fortune had been taken away, she saw little use of her sisters or their rituals, deciding to fade from the world to her own fate, remembering and then forgetting what she had seen, save for a few broken words in the night - the words of a God in her ear.

But He had never left her for long. In the plague-ridden districts of Dunwall several years later, she was found lying in a ruined apartment, buried in frayed curtains and old riverboat sails, alone and far away. And when she slept, a voice called to her, one of command and severity upon the tongue. She had gotten used to His presence, had spoken to him since she was young and small. She remembered first observing his long face that never aged and the darkness of his eyes - coal that never faded, even if burned.

 _Her second shadow,_ she had often jested.

But that night he bore no smile, said no pleasentries. He spoke in vague riddles and hurried ramblings, as he paced from one end of her dream to the other, saying words she scaresly understood.

"This world tilts into the very edge of the Void," he had said, "it is becoming tainted, spoiled, as parts of the Void sink into the seams. You have seen it yourself, the frayed edges of reality, falling through your fingers like ash. Something is… coming, and you and I may change with it."

She remembered the coldness of his fingers when he drew her hand to his chest. She felt nothing. No heartbeat, no warmth, just the idle stillness of a dead man, but with it, fear.

"There is word of a woman to the south, red-eyed and searching. She goes by the name Billie Lurk. Find her before the world crumbles beneath your feet."

By dawn the child of the Void had fled the flooded districts of Dunwall to the eastern harbour, hiding the whale bones tied to her waist-belt with a long navy coat and smoothing the folds over the dirk along her thigh. With her hound by her side she boarded a passing vessel and journeyed to the isle of Serkonos to follow a rumour of an old Whaler, who searched for her lost mentor.

The rumour had led her to many places, from the marketplace of Karnaca to the mining districts, the Cyria Gardens and even to the grander tiers of the city, yet the fruitless spoils of the wealthy eventually led her to the end of her journey - to the forgotten mines of Shindaerey North Quarry.

She had heard of the mining town from her sisters, once, of the Eyeless Order that guarded the ruins with creatures born of foul magic. Only what she found were husks, corpses left to rot in the sun and to be chewed on by the rats. She regarded the dead with little interest, for men died like flies to rain, and no weeping would have brought them back.

After searching the many passageways she happened upon a peculiar sight: a statue, held in what may have been a library to the Eyeless Order. Only the statue was no ordinary statue, but that of an eye, a god, crystallised in a moment of time, never to change, and in it, the searing red blaze of power that she could not help but reach out and touch.

In an instant her vision changed. Heat stung her flesh, then receded, and all of a sudden she was transported to a place she knew all to well.

The Void.

No word within the modern tongue could do it justice; no description could render it accurately; no painter could replicate the blues of its vale, nor the shades of violet in its sails; no mistro could imitate the heart-rending moans of a leviathan song so perfectly than the Void itself, for to do so was beyond mortal capability. It remained the most beautiful wonderment that mortal accomplishments would never meet, a place rarly seen by the living, only by the dead.

But Francesca had seen it, had witnessed the canvas of ocean starlight and gleaming lanterns, of the violet shrouds flowing from floating isles in a windless current, and the stolen moments suspended in time, all in her dreams.

Yet, the Void she was in now was nothing like her dreams.

Walking that she was, she could sense that something within the underworld was different. Nothing so simple to point out but there was something amiss.

The images the Void projected were arbitrary, it was true, but the very weight of the gravity, usually a light, fleeting feeling, was heavier, harsher.

The air was far colder than it should have been, drafty in fact, as if she were placed inside the mouth of a cave. It set the hairs on the nape of her neck alight, far different to the instant drowsy indolence that the realm mimicked to any who came upon it, usually by soft tones or the deep moans of the sea.

Yet, there was no gentle lustre to the realm, only rough detail, accompanied by unsettling silence. The grim-lit flagstone she walked - the twisted passageways she wandered were but a pale imitation of what had been a great temple; nothing other than cracked flagstone of a rippling memory: black, grey and faded at the edges as the Void attempted to fill in what it could not bleed from time.

She followed the tracks of another, used the bones of whales as her guide. Each time her steps were led astray, the thrum of the bones would die on her belt. But when the bones sensed the presence of the Other, her chest would flutter in an unsteady beat, and the runes dyed into the ivory would glow from the black ink like a beacon, highlighting the stairways or inclines… up and up… to the Whaler.

She bounded down vacant roads, up winding stairways and even higher cliffs, her white hair uncurling from the bun, flaying like thick strands of rope caught in the wind. The bone charms rattled like a tiny storm had been captured inside each one, conflicting with the rapid rhythm of her heart, beating her breasts black.

Despite the pain the witch surged onward, scrabbling up the missing broken bricks of a long, shattered wall, the smaller rocks digging into her knees. When she finally reached the summit, she found her breath stolen and returned in ragged gasps, her chest heaving and sweat smearing the dust from her brow. But no feeling she felt could have rivalled the view before her.

She stared with hooded eyes into the land lain beneath the ridge - straight into the horizon, where there was the scorched corpse of a city, suspended and ancient, forgotten and lost.

How clearly she saw it.

The sundered towers were the pointed pinnacles of the ribs, the wooden ramparts were the rotting muscle - black and festered; the great metal machines were the armour, protecting and constricting the unnecessary, shedding flesh. It was all bound tight under an arched roof of stone, holding the ruin and all the lost souls contained within.

Light bled from narrow apertures within it, but instead of bathing a honeyed radiance, it provided a sullen, unfeeling haze that merely parted shadows. She cast her hand out upon one such light, only to find that she felt no warmth from it, only a sickening cold that had little rival. Her white eyes barely adjusted to the corners of darkness away from such light, spotting the edges of her vision.

When her sight had adjusted to the difference, she saw them: cultists of the Eyeless Order, true in their form, not rotting meat sacks. Yet again, even in the Void, most were not alive but dead; soulless husks left as statues all throughout the ruins. A few fortunate lay snoring in quiet coves far from the path. The rest had been inbedded into the rock faces, their blood left to seep into the floor.

She did not look at them, could not stomach the sight of their unblemished faces even after death, or their fine suits, frayed at the seams but other than that fine detail, utterly unspoilt. Even the air smelled of lavender perfume with a hint of oxrush flower. It only brought up memories she had preferred forgotten.

That was until she saw the boy.

He was a small, scrawny thing with barely any clothing on his back to be anything different to the rats by his feet. How they found refuge in the Void at all was beyond her, but the boy must have used that same way.

Bending over slightly to see him closer, the witch frowned upon spying the many scratches covering his arms: bloodied and bruised under the flickering radiance of ritual tapers. He continued to rock in the corner of his rusted cage, knees tucked to his chest and a tuft of dark hair shrouding his face from sight.

She quietly knelt to the floor, touched the ground with a finger. She closed her eyes and felt the form of the boy react to her magic; flickering, fading at the edges. He was a memory.

The boy shivered, then slowly peered up.

There was a darkness to his eyes, one that swallowed the entirety of them save for a dim, white shine.

"Do I know you, boy?" she whispered, tilting her face ever so slightly to see him more clearly.

Yes, she did indeed know him from somewhere, yet found it difficult to put a name to the face. Rat Boy may have been appropiate, considering the thin, pointed nose, jutted cheekbones and taut jowls he had. He only needed whiskers and a tail, the ears were large enough on their own.

The Rat Boy did not respond with words. Instead, a small white rat scratched its way up his torn trouser leg, faltering at the cap of his knees where it waited for his hand to pet it. The boy stroked it behind the ears before reaching through the iron railing of his cage, rat in hand. It was there he kept his hand still, often glancing between it and her, as if in offering.

The witch hesitated, halfway reaching for the boy, then pulling back. After some thought she cupped her hands, bridging the gap between them and allowing the rodent to pounce over her fingers. Once on her, it curled its long tail around its body and sat on its hind legs, still staring unquestionably at the boy, but nestled rather comfortably on her.

The Rat Boy smiled at that, cracked teeth not quite reaching the cheekbone. His small hand drifted west and the rat's focus shifted. He did not need to speak on the gesture. The witch understood.

She regarded the child one last time with a wry smile and placed the white rat on a stone step, leaving the Rat Boy in his cage to follow his pet through the Void.

The rat guided her through old houses split open like river crusts, the rifts between so narrow that even slipping through sidewards barely made much of a difference. By the vales of translucent webbing and ancient marks enscripted into the stone, there was no mistaking the fact that no one had trodden through such a place in a very long time. Most would have been suspicious.

Not her. She rarely gave her trust to men, but to rats, she trusted the vermin completely, following the white one as it scurried along the cracked brick and hollow drain pipes scattered across the flagstone, until they finally met the light on the other side.

And at the heart of that light was a stairway, high and crumbled, but raised in such a way that mere mortals would tremble upon its sight. There were bodies petrified by the first step, fools who had sought power from the divine, only to find eternal imprisonment.

She knew she was different.

She walked towards the stairway but the rat did not follow. Francesca wished to bay it goodbye, but when she turned, she saw the Rat Boy smiling in the distance, with his pet perched happily over his left shoulder.

And so she dared to follow the stairway into the light, feeling a cold weight release its clutch from her soul, only for a colder, harsher weight to replace it. The foreign view before her only unnerved her more.

The Heart of the Void: the heart of time was a sea of decay with leviathans drifting in the sky. There was everything but there was also nothing, grey mist drowning the horizons, with only a kingdom of stone crowning the centre. It was the resting place of a God, yet the God was a thrall to it.

 _Everything was created from here,_ she realised, peering down at her own reflection in the murky water. Kneeling down, dipping her hands into the surface, Francesca pressed the cool liquid to her lips, only to spit the substance out, having tasted the horrid tang of warm blood.

 _The Void is wrong here. This isn't how it should be._

The bone charms began to hammer her chest in a much harder, erratic rhythm. Knowing she was close, Francesca wiped the blood from her mouth and descended into the water, purging through the ocean towards the kingdom of stone.

And when she finally reached the epicentre, her feet faltered. Her lips parted for a quivering breath.

A man. A body. A being lain across stark stone: his hair ash, his skin pale sand. There were shards, glimmering like mirrors scattered all around him. It reminded her of a summoning, a ritual, only lacking candles and the moans of the damned. It was beautiful.

The witch peeked around the stone hall, finding only weeping spirits in her wake. She gingerly took a step forward, then another and another, closing in on the foreign man who became ever more familiar.

"By the Void," she whispered, falling down upon the earth and folding her arms around him. She drew his head onto her knees and begun to stroke prescious locks from his cheeks. It took her a moment to realise that something was amiss.

He breathed, chest rising and falling in time with the currents of the bloodied ocean. His snores were that of the deep, rumbling like the leviathans guarding such a sanctuary. But magic did not radiate from him in a tingling warmth.

There was warmth to him, but it was… mortal.

He was Mortal.

"So, you're the one who's been following me."

In a sudden motion, a blade had been unsheathed from her thigh, glinting silver in the shadow. Along the chest of the man the blade rested, but in the reflection was a whaler dressed in a crimson raiment.

"You're from the isles of Pandyssia," the witch murmured, tilting her dirk to catch the whaler more clearly. "Everyone from there is the same, hum of old magic. You carry history on your back, possibilities on your breath, hopes on your tongue, but you know this world will never grant you tranquility."

She frowned, sniffing the air. "You smell like death and sea. You carry the murk on your boots, you hold the eye of the god of old. You are the whaler I have come for, Billie Lurk."

Francesca peeked up, finding the whaler had drawn her own sword, dipping it under her chin. "And you've been following me. How long?"

"Long enough. But I'm not here for you anymore," Francesca said, frowning down at the man in her arms. "You know who he is. The Outsider. He appears the same, feels the same, but he is… changed, weaker. What have you done to him?"

Billie Lurk for a moment did not answer, dadding to stare down upon the god with a flicker of pity. She withdrew her sword, allowing the blade to rest by her thigh. "I gave him what no one else could. I gave him peace."

"Peace?" Francesca blinked, the concept foreign to her. "He was a God. He sewed the very foundations of magic, he breathed truth into a world too lost to accept such a gift. He was knowing and wise, and you made him into… this?"

A tear slipped down her cheek, fresh and salty against her quivering lip. "He's a god no more."

"And he's better for it," Billie whispered, folding her arms. "He was never given a choice. All people die eventually. I think he knew that, probably better than anyone else. At least he has a chance to live as he would have wanted. Not many get a second chance."

"He will die on his own. This world is poor on those that have been apart from it. It would have been better if you slit his throat."

"Sometimes mercy cuts deeper than any knife."

From her lap the once-god begun to stir, raising a hand to his brow and groaning. When his eyes parted, Francesca saw mortal brown, not an opal that consumed centuries. Her heart stung from such a sight. Her fingers twitched against his hair, feeling nervous, shaken.

The Outsider smiled, a wry smile that did not quite reach hollow cheeks. His hand reached up, curled around her own cheek, wiped a tear from her eyes.

"Do not fear," he mouthed, curling a white strand behind her ear.

He was new to her, similar and foreign. A man who once knew the hearts of the cruelest of men. A man who once knew the futures of many. And yet his smile was genuine, free, wise but careless for he no longer knew the future, no longer knew her fate.

Francesca closed her eyes, caging any emotion that dared the surface. "Then, what do we do now?"


	2. The Punishment of Mortals

The Child of the Void

~~o~~

Chapter Two: The Punishment of Mortals

He slept quietly for a murderer.

That was her first thought that night when settled upon a makeshift mattress warmed by the crackling embers of a poorly kept fire, hidden amongst the plague-ridden sheets of a ruined apartment. The Warren, she believed the locals had taken to calling the slums North-East of Karnaca. The stench of gutted whales even dared to travel thus far north.

There were few, she supposed, that believed him to be innocent of his crimes: witches, worshippers perhaps, those with faces sewn between two personas, one who valued the magnificence of his touch, the other that would readily carve his very flesh into runes and eat the might of his heart, if to gain some small tear of divinity.

Others, such as the religious heretics of the Abbey, had a different yet similarly twisted opinion of him. Perhaps not enough to cut runes into his bones and dine on his innards, but to hang him from a stake or lash the secrets from his mind until he was a soulless husk in a frail body, were just a few of the tamer actions of justice they would enact upon him, quite happily in fact.

And unlike the worshippers that nestled in quiet coves away from civilisation, the Abbey was everywhere. In the streets, in the squalor, in the very kingdoms.

Francesca tilted her hand away from the shadows, finding the slight indent of a mark the Abbey had left during her once-capture. _The sign of the scriptures will heal you,_ the heretic had promised when the brand was pressed well into her skin.

She sighed, staring distantly into the flames. _Only fire could purge the nonsense from my flesh, and even that remains clear._

And then it was her own opinions on the Outsider, that of a part-witch and even fanatic to some extent, she supposed. She never did warrant a label other than Drifter.

In her mind, murderer was an apt term for the Outsider, no matter who the Void chose to carry its actions into the world. Always he would cast his mark out upon those he deemed worthy of his attention, always to those that kindled a likeness of a once-boy turned to godhood. He knew the devastation his chosen would do upon the world, just as she knew the actions she played in the voilence dealt by her hands and knives. That indirectly made him a murderer, not that it was a sin. It was a virtue.

 _Stay innocent in this world, you die. Stay innocent in this world long enough for death not to claim you, the Void will take the place of the reaper,_ she thought, the whisperings of her dear old mother stirring in her mind. _How right that old witch was, shame her bones now lie in an old god's grove twisted and gnawed on._

The world was cruel, ancient, devious. There was no escape, only acceptance.

And he was now new to it all.

Francesca pressed her hands into her chest, forcing her nerves to settle mid-flutter. She had followed the word of the Outsider since birth, hoped that her final journey would end in her being greeted by a confident deity, one she had grown to know.

She had imagined the scenes so many times. The wicked smirk upon a pale face, the glimmer of eyes void of life, only truly dark desire. The waving of a hand, the slice of a dagger across her wrists and the sweet embrace of divinity beckoning her to the slow-ending crescendo of the Void.

She could still remember the way her pained heart writhered in delicious agony when dreaming of him. Of when the Outsider would caress her warm fingers with his own cold, with words that spun tales of desire like poetry.

She bit her lips, clutched her petticoat, desired nothing more than to scream her pain out into the night.

She was promised a God! Yet what she was presented with was a frail man that slept by the fire, his skin once a familiar ivory, now rosy in the kiss of flame, his crown abasked in radiance and seeming far more living than a dead deity should have been.

He even murmured in his sleep, soft tones of contemptment purring from thin lips creased without mirth or vindictive honesty. He was…

"Mortal," she whispered, her breath coaxing further warmth into the evening. Even her own warmth filled her with dread. "He can be killed now you know, permanently. A knife to the heart. Trauma to the head. Even the plague. You spoke of mercy, that allowing him to breathe gave him another chance, but all he has is pain awaiting him. I cannot see how he will survive."

The Whaler, Billie Lurk, peered over the fireplace opposite her; her amber skin licked by flame, her own red eye alight like a red star. "Who are you to him?" she asked, resting her elbows on her knees, leaning over the edge of her whicker chair. "He's never mentioned you, but you talk about him as if you know him. Intimate, even. Where you one of his chosen? Like Daud?"

Francesca frowned, grey brows creasing over a paler complexion. "I don't know that name. He never spoke of others, but I assumed there were. I am not like them. The Outsider never created me, I never bore his mark but we did know each other in the Void. He was always there, guiding me. That is all I will say."

Billie Lurk nodded, picking a tin of jellied eels from the floor and cutting the edge open with a serrated knife. When parted she tossed the lid away, pointing to the once-Outsider with her blade tipped down. "Do you have a plan for him?"

"Leave him by the river and let his soul be carried away with the rest of the sin in this city," she said, a sad flicker passing her silver eyes. "Slice his throat and let the blood pool beneath my hands. Other than those… no. I never expected him to be like this. I'm not sure how to even try to help him in this world. I'm a drifter myself. I have no ties to living family anymore, no company other than my mutt," she said, stroking the shaggy fur of the sleeping hound nestled under her steepled knees. "He was divinity. I prayed to him. I spoke to him. I worshipped him. That was my life. Now…"

"He's alive."

"But he isn't the Outsider anymore! He isn't benevolent, omniscient, omnipresent, he isn't God. All that died when you shattered him from the Void. There's no kindle of divine in him, nothing that makes him different from anyone else on this putrid world! I cannot save a man doomed to die, even if he is masked with the God I thought I lov-"

Francesca faltered, her lips a quiver in disbelief. She cupped her neck, slowly shaking her head. "I cannot pay him back for his generosity. Not when he is like this. I cannot protect him, like I cannot protect myself."

The Whaler's gaze flickered over the daggers sheathed at the girl's waist. Blood stained the garments beneath. "You managed to follow me through Karnaca. Never thought anyone had the guts to pull a stand like that. You did. I know you can defend yourself. You should be able to defend him just as well. Besides, I'm sure you can repay the debt you owe him. Simple, really. A life for a life. Save him like he did you."

"I'm not even sure where to begin."

The Whaler shrugged. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."

She threw the girl a jellied eel. Francesca caught it in one hand, spying the dead eye of the fish with a wry smile. "You mean to leave him here, don't you?"

Billie Lurk paused for a moment, half a jellied eel peaking out from her plump bottom lip. She tore the neck from the fish quickly, taking one long, slow gulp. She may have spoken if the timing had been different, may have graced Francesca with an honest answer rather than leave her mind in the dark. But the once-God had made his entrance, and to ignore a deity, even now mortal, was a grave offence.

Billie Lurk and the Outsider exchanged glances in the firelight, an indescribable message passing silently between the pair that Francesca could only ponder the meaning on. And then the Whaler collected her tin and sheathed her knife, stepping into the shadows of the balcony.

"I'll leave you two to talk," was her last utterance, a sigh that whispered through the evening wind, quivering the flames in a peculiar, feverish display.

The warmth disappeared momentarily and Francesca allowed herself to breathe. Her mutt stirred beneath her, pawing the leggings underneath her petticoat as it rolled onto its belly.

She wished to lose herself in the peculiarity of her hound, to lie by his side and let the world drift into meaningless slumber. Yet the hairs on the nape of her neck stood tall. A nervousness curled her gut into knots and a keen gaze sewed the cords of her voice mute.

The Outsider raised himself from his bedroll quietly, his brown hair tousled and imperfect. _The Void kept it perfect, like he would never be touched by the hands of age and time._

Yet still there was familiarity in the way her body stilled in his presence, especially under his gaze - a dim shade of bloodened earth, twins that steadied on her form despite a wariness she sensed in the air.

He shuffled to her side almost shyly, a frayed blanket baying the cold of the night away from his bare chest and trousered legs. He watched her like a gutter rat cornered, perhaps wondering if she would slice the supple flesh beneath his chin before stubble had a chance to grow, or if she would vanish into the night never to return. Either were possible for her.

Eventually, he parted the silence in a voice both raspy and dry. "You're disappointed."

Her clench on the jellied eel tightened. "You changed."

The Outsider chuckled, displaying a smirk that did not quite reach his gaunt cheekbones. "Everyone changes. I'm just… more."

 _Less,_ she instantly thought, scowling further into the corner of the apartment. There was only a dull painting, one of a steel trawler, to provide any comfort. But the meshed greys of the waves seemed to call to her, lull her to a familiar realm of hues and sails, water and whales, and floating isles silent in an eternal abyss.

"I knew your mother once, Francesca Marleigh," he whispered, earning a surprised glance and parted lips. He smiled. "In the bad old days. Rats were a kindness to this world. Even then, many pined for my favour. Rats, peasants, even kings, but she… she caught my attention when few ever had. And it was all because of you, little duchess. The sole daughter of Lord Marleigh, heiress to a kingdom. You were a girl destined to sire three children to conquer the nameless isles in your name. And yet… your mother changed you. Hah, I admit, I'd never witnessed a mother cut her daughter's soul before and offer it to the Void. But she did."

The Outsider leaned over to her, slow and soft. One hand rested on her thigh, the other curled his frayed blanket around her, while his breath coaxed a tingle to her ear. "Let me tell you something about the Void, little duchess. It hungers, always. It touches the dead and the dying, the awake and the dreaming, alike. It festers in the mind of the old, feeds on the weak and frail, but in the young? In a child? That is a feast it will relish for an eternity. When the Void fed on your soul, I too felt it's hunger like my own stomach was empty. But where you blended with the Void, I felt more than just appeasement. I felt you. Your emotions, your memories, though bleak and small for one so young. I tasted your youth and found myself wanting. I felt another stand beside me, and that someone was you."

His hand came up to trace her jaw, stroking the soft curve of her bone as if it were the first time he truly got to feel her skin beneath the pad of his thumb. He took in a shaky breath, leaning further into her neck. "Your mother wanted to bend the Void to her will. She was willing to sacrifice her own flesh and blood for the gifts it offered. She was sorely mistaken. And the Void swallowed her whole."

Francesca swallowed thickly, her mind enraptured by his words, her heart an unsteady rhythm beneath her breast. A single tear slipped down her cheek, only to be caught by his thumb.

His sharp inhale grazed her ear. He tilted the droplet in his touch, his brows creasing in wonder.

For a moment she had to wonder how different his world had become, if basic senses of touch, smell, taste and sound were in their very essence new and forthcoming. Could he smell the traces of smoke in the air? Could he hear her quivering pants as clear as they sounded within her own ears? Could he feel the subtle bump of a scar along her chin, or the coolness of her tears? If he were to taste them, would he taste salt or sorrow?

And then his focus returned to her, the trace of the tear wiped away and the warmth of his touch far more burning. "The Void was slowly devouring me, like it devours all. I am free now. But you… you are still attached. It drew us together and now it draws us apart. It will always be apart of you."

He sighed, turning back towards the fire. "Was it the God you loved or the Void?"

There was no answer. The silence was made bitter for it.

She clutched the velvet folds of her torn tailcoat to her chest. Underneath, a sheer grey corset covered her to her waist but still the night felt far too humid for anything else. Her lips parted to speak, but it was as if the Void itself forbade it. After all, what could she possible say to her once-beloved when she did not know the truth for herself?

The Outsider hugged his knees, resting his chin on the pinnacles. "Will you leave?"

Francesca wet her lips nervously, raking an unsteady hand through her hair. "I was speaking to the whaler about it. I believe she might leave you here and find her own way. I came here seeking you, and now that's ended I suppose I may do the same. I might return to Dunwall. Or journey to Pandyssia. Or…"

She sighed, warily holding her brow. "What about you?"

"My eyes were closed for centuries. I walked through the minds of generations, and now…" he shuddered, slowly shaking his head. "She did the impossible. I-I'm not sure where my path will lead."

Her face softened. _He is lost, alone, afraid. I was once like that, and he came and saved me._ The depths of her mind fell to the wary thoughts of pity and the words of the whaler rung true, _save him like he did you._

She found his hand dangling from his knee. Quietly, she interlocked their fingers, giving his a slight squeeze.

The Outsider looked up uncertainty, his fingers lax against her own, as if expecting trickery or dishonesty.

Francesca bared her heart to him only once, forcing a wry smile. "You can… you can come with me, if you like. Until we find a place for you."

The Outsider gave a cautious nod, tightening his hold on her fingers.

...

Thank you for reading this chapter and following the story so far, hope its going okay it's been a while since I've played Dishonoured but I love the Outsider :D


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